Rasmussen: Tancredo Gives Dems lead in Colo.

Third-party candidate Tom Tancredo has now moved past Republican nominee Dan Maes, but Democrat John Hickenlooper still remains well ahead in the race to be Colorado’s next governor.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in Colorado finds Hickenlooper earning 46 percent support, his best showing in the three-way race to date. Tancredo picks up 25 percent of the vote, while Maes runs third with 21 percent. One percent prefer some other candidate, and six percent are undecided.

Most analysts see Hickenlooper as the easy winner as long as Maes and Tancredo split the GOP vote. Maes currently carries just 46 percent of the voters in his own party, while Tancredo, a former GOP congressman, picks up 36 percent Republican support.

Eighty-eight percent of Colorado Democrats support Hickenlooper. Among voters not affiliated with either party, 41 percent favor Hickenlooper to Tancredo’s 32 percent and Maes’ 17 percent.

Eighty-five percent of Hickenlooper supporters say they are already certain how they will vote in November, compared to just 53 percent of Maes voters and 48 percent of those who favor Tancredo.

Two weeks ago, Hickenlooper, currently the mayor of Denver, held a 36 percent lead to Maes’ 24 percent and Tancredo’s 14 percent. Twenty percent were undecided at that time, but that number has dropped dramatically to the apparent advantage of Hickenlooper and Tancredo, the candidate of the American Constitution Party.

Just after Maes won the Republican Primary in early August, it was Hickenlooper 43 percent, Maes 31 percent and Tancredo 18 percent. GOP front-runner Scott McInnis, who had been leading Hickenlooper consistently for months, was felled by a plagiarism scandal, and, reflecting the unhappiness of many Republicans in the state, Tancredo jumped into the race, saying Maes had no chance of winning.

Hickenlooper is viewed favorably by 56 percent of Colorado voters, including 36 percent very favorable. He is seen unfavorably by 40 percent, with 22 percent very unfavorable

For Maes, a small businessman, favorables are 34 percent, and unfavorables are 55 percent. But this includes very favorables of just five percent and very unfavorables of 31 percent.

Forty-two percent hold a favorable opinion of Tancredo, but 51 percent regard him unfavorably. His very favorables are 15 percent, very unfavorables 36 percent.

The survey of 750 likely voters in Colorado was conducted on Sept. 12, 2010, by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC.

Third-party candidate Tom Tancredo has now moved past Republican nominee Dan Maes, but Democrat John Hickenlooper still remains well ahead in the race to be Colorado s next governor.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in Colorado finds...